“The thing that I’ve always loved about doing Carnaval Brasileiro in Austin is that people tend to come to that party really ready to let go and have a great time, and are very open as a result. So to be that person onstage, to see that mood of joy and of fun and of maybe something a little different than you’re used to – and I don’t know, irreverence – has always been really a joy to me,” Sharpe says, from her office at UT. “It’s sort of the height of entertaining to get to be onstage with a bunch of people in costume, running around. There are all kinds of people in that audience. There’s all different ages, there’s all different walks of life. Some are curious; some know exactly what it is. Some are Brazilian, most are not. And to just kind of get to be standing up there and trying to make them all have fun is quite exciting.”

Sharpe & the Samba Police sketched out a world scene at the height of Austin blues mania, and presided over the Brazilian Mardi Gras from 1988 until 2000. Carnaval’s promoter decided to go in a different direction, and at the time Sharpe was raising two small children. Fifteen years later, she was able to reassemble most of the original, mid-Eighties band.

“Many years ago when I was in college, I already had a love for Latin America and Latin American music, but I wasn’t as familiar with Brazilian music. And somebody gave me an LP of Brazilian music, and I kind of opened my eyes and said, ‘Whaaat?’ I just loved it. I really fell in love with Brazilian music and, through that, with the Portuguese language.”

“It kind of resonated with some part of me because Brazilian music combines beautiful lyrics, a gorgeous language, interesting kinds of harmonies, and amazing percussion and rhythms that aren’t all one. In different parts of Brazil you have different rhythms that prevail, and so it’s never boring, and it’s more than just one dance or one rhythm. It’s the kind of thing that you can listen to it your whole life and you never feel like you’ve heard everything. We’re getting together and playing this stuff, and we have a long history together. We’re enjoying being together again. We laugh about these songs because we’re reprising music we did many years ago, and we just have a smile on our face when we rehearse because it brings back a lot of fun memories for us.”

FOREPLAY MARDI GRAS Come meet the new queens of reign … we mean Rain, and the every-Tuesday event, Foreplay. It's Mardi Gras: Show 'em if you got 'em, and you might get some beads. 10pm-12mid. Rain on 4th, 217 W. Fourth. Free.

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